Dr Martin Thomas, a documentary maker and a research fellow in the Department of History, says the excursion broke remarkable new ground, bringing back scenes and sounds never experienced outside the region.
Jointly sponsored by the Australian government, the National Geographic Society and the US-based Smithsonian Institution, the expedition was a major interdisciplinary research venture of immediate post-war period, Dr Thomas says.
Under the leadership of the photographer and self-taught ethnologist Charles P. Mountford (1890-1976), the 17 scientists and their support staff studied both the natural environment and the Aboriginal people who they met along the way.
As well as several thousand photos, miles of film footage and audio recordings, the expedition collected 500 bark paintings, 13,500 botanical specimens, 30,000 fish, 850 birds and 460 other animals.
ABC Radio sent two staff members to join the expedition: Colin Simpson (who later became an internationally known travel writer) and Raymond Giles, a young audio technician from Adelaide, who is interviewed on the program.
Dr Thomas' documentary, Return to Arnhem Land, records his 2006 journey to a community in Arnhem Land's Oenpelli region, where he returned (or 'repatriated') much of the film footage, audio recordings and photos made almost 60 years earlier.
"Digital recording technology means that almost a truckload of information - films, photos sounds - can be carried on a few CDs and a laptop computer and taken to one of the more isolated communities in the country," he says.
"Return to Arnhem Land reveals how the digitised copying of archival media can contribute to the cultural health of contemporary Aboriginal communities."
Return to Arnhem Land will be broadcast on Saturday, June 2nd, on Radio National'sRadio Eye at 2pm. -University of Sydney
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